I would try setting them to power level 1 and back to auto and see what happens. I'd also be curious as to the number of coverage hole events WCS is reporting (RRM page), or if you event log shows for the reason for power changes (either up or down).
The question comes down to this: Are the trouble tickets complaining because of the number of bars, or because there is an actual performance connectivity problem? Here is info I had from the wireless development people at Cisco when I asked about the change in the # of AP's at full power when upgrading to 7: "You need to keep in mind that we do not take channels into account for power calculations, we actually aim for cell edge design, so that there is only small amount of overlap in cells. The change in this release was a small one (in comparison to 5.2 and 6), and it was to make powers of corner AP more smooth in respect to their neighbors." With that in mind, 62.32% of my a/n AP's are at max power, and only 28.39% of my b/g/n are at full power - no complaints about coverage. I do see AP's at power levels of 7 and 8 (b/g/n), but this is in dense residential (dorms) where there is an AP's in every suite, or every other suite. Jeff >>> Bob Richman <[email protected]> 9/6/2011 2:10 PM >>> Actually we upgraded from 7.0.98. I cannot really state how many of our APs were at max power, but like some other schools, we are finding a lot of trouble tickets where the signal was weak and the adjacent APs were at like 7 or 8. But I did change to manual for a couple APs, then back to auto, so we'll see what happens... Thanks for the help -----Original Message----- From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jeffrey Sessler Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2011 4:32 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Signal variability after upgrade to 7.0.116 Rob, Was this also an upgrade from 4.x. to 7.x or did you make any stops along the way? If coverage hole detection is working, and your AP's are running at lower power, then the controllers feel that there is no need for adjustments. Are you experiencing connectivity issues with clients? As an experiment, try setting some of the AP's in an area to manual mode, power level 1. Then go back and put them in automatic mode and see what happens. Do they stay at power level 1, do they go back to where they were, or to some in-between level? I've seen cases in which an AP is never touched by the controller because an assumption is made on how it is normally set from the factory. Here are my setting for TPC and Coverage: Coverage Data RSSI: -85 Voice RSSI: -80 Min failed Client Count per AP: 3 Coverage exception level per AP: 25 TPC Max power: 30 min power: -10 power threshold: -69 best, Jeff >>> Bob Richman <[email protected]> 9/6/2011 11:44 AM >>> TPC is on Automatic Enable coverage hole detection is on. Thanks! -----Original Message----- From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jeffrey Sessler Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2011 2:19 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Signal variability after upgrade to 7.0.116 Bob, Is TPC running? That is, set to automatic or fixed? More importantly, under "Coverage" is "Enable Coverage Hole Detection" enabled? This is required so that the controllers can detect holes in coverage and boost power levels to compensate. Jeff >>> Bob Richman <[email protected]> 9/6/2011 8:53 AM >>> We have been watching this and feel we are in the same boat as everyone else. I did change the power threshold to -50dBm on one of our sample controllers, but have not seen any difference occur. Anyone have any news on this? Thanks, Bob Richman -----Original Message----- From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jeffrey Sessler Sent: Friday, September 02, 2011 11:07 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Signal variability after upgrade to 7.0.116 Daniel, Did you verify that TPC was enabled for the radios? Typically, you'd have to have a pretty dense deployment to have your AP's running at a power level of 7, so I'm wondering if they perhaps "came up" at that level and if TPC is disabled, they would never increase in power. Did you by any chance try setting the periphery to a power level of 1, then set the power back to auto? I'd be curious to know if they stay at that level or reduce power back to 7. DCA will change channels/reduce power - only TPC will increase power. Oh - and are these 3500 "i" series or "e", and if "e" are you using Cisco antennas, and more importantly, made sure to define/assign the correct antenna? Jeff >>> "Lay, Daniel" <[email protected]> 9/2/2011 7:53 AM >>> We have experienced a similar issue. I had 1131's in several buildings and coverage was decent. At the time that was acceptable because wireless was treated as an convenience. Now perceptions have changed to wireless is mandatory; so in light of that we upgraded several buildings to the 3500s and even increased the number of AP,s in some buildings. As kids have returned we have seen a very large number of complaints coming from areas we thought we had the jump on. These are also areas that were not perfect with the 1131's (or we would not have upgraded) but they were not as high a volume of complaints as before. I opened a TAC with Cisco and we discovered that the AP's were at only a 7 power setting with RRM and when we moved to manual on the periphery AP's the coverage really improved. It makes me wonder if RRM is experiencing issues though because there was one AP in new construction area that could see other APs far away and I expected the power to be a 1 or 2 but it was at 7. Also, I have always hated to open a TAC because I was sure I would get someone that did not "COMPREHEND ENGLISH - (I hate it when companies claim their oversees guys can speak English, sure they can speak it but can they comprehend it)." This time though I have to brag on CISCO and on TAC support Bob Tracy. It was one of the best Tech support experiences I have had in a long time. From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Christina Klam Sent: Friday, September 02, 2011 8:53 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Signal variability after upgrade to 7.0.116 Upgrade Path: We upgraded from 4.X to 7.0.116. TX power: As you all mentioned, I went from having 98% of all APs running at power level 1 before the upgrade to just 55.5% of our b/g and 90% of our a after the upgrade. (We are running a mix of b/g, n, and a.) I also looked at the APs in the areas of the reported connectivity and performance issues and they are all using 1131s with TX power of 1. But, I did notice that the channels changing over the course of a week. This is an anomaly in our environment. As planned this summer, I will continue to rollout new APs in these areas. As a tangent, I was hoping to contain a b-only clients in a separate SSID or VLAN. How do others deal with B clients? I did a report and found that we have at least five b-connections a week. In our environment, that is small but not statistically insignificant. Thank you everyone. Christina Klam Network Administrator Institute for Advanced Study Email: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Einstein Drive Telephone: 609-734-8154 Princeton, NJ 08540 Fax: 609-951-4418 ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
